Agapito E. Santangelo
Causal inferencePolicy evaluationDigital data & MLSatellite & geospatial data
Applied economist · PhD — University of Molise
I am on the 2026–27 job market for academic and policy positions. My Job Market Paper →
I am an applied economist: I evaluate public policies with causal inference, digital and satellite data, and machine learning.
Much of my recent work studies how digitalisation transforms the public sector — from EU cohesion funds to municipal digital services — using difference-in-differences designs, panel data and archived web traces. I also work on health, institutions and territorial dynamics.
More recently I opened a geospatial research line: I built a panel of all 7,900 Italian municipalities from twenty families of satellite and administrative sources — VIIRS night-time lights, GHSL, ESA WorldCover, Hansen Global Forest Change, MODIS, Sentinel-5P, ERA5-Land — extracted through Earth Engine with reproducible pipelines. On that base sits the MESWI, an equitable and sustainable well-being index for every Italian municipality: 49 indicators across 12 domains.
I also work as a Data Analysis Strategist at Instant Analytics, applying text mining and machine learning to real-time monitoring of socioeconomic phenomena: a useful complement to my academic research, because it shows how these methods behave in practice.
I hold a PhD in Economics from the University of Molise with the Doctor Europaeus distinction, including a visiting period at the Universitat Politècnica de València. I referee for six journals, including The Annals of Regional Science, the Italian Economic Journal and PLOS ONE.
Recent updates
Featured research
Policy evaluation · Digitalisation EU Cohesion Policy and Digital Public Services Effects of cohesion funds on municipal digital services, using archived web data and quasi-experimental methods. Job Market Paper. Under review
Territorial well-being · Satellite data The Italian Municipality Equitable and Sustainable Well-being Index (MESWI) An equitable and sustainable well-being index for all 7,900 Italian municipalities: 49 indicators across 12 domains, built on satellite and administrative data. Preprint · arXiv
Institutions · Governance Administrative Capture from Within What does administrative capture do to institutions — and can we foresee it? Presented at AISRe 2026. Ongoing
Infrastructure · Transport Competition Without Punctuality Gains Competition in Italian high-speed rail did not improve punctuality: causal evidence. Under review
Health · Public economics Fiscal Constraints and Health Inequality Research Do fiscal constraints shape research on health inequality? A bibliometric perspective. Working paper